PREFACE
There is a vast amount of authentic material for reconstructing the life of Tolstoï. It exists in autobiographical fragments, in multitudes of letters, in the three volumes compiled by Biryukof under Tolstoï’s own directions. There are many leaves from his own experiences in nearly as in the case of Goethe’s “Dichtung und Wahrheit,” it requires caution to differentiate between what actually happened and what were the figments of his poetic imagination. Even these picture the evolution of his soul, and Tolstoï was far more interested in his soul than he was concerned with his body.
It is the biographer’s only duty to gather all the light he can from all possible sources and concentrate it in his lens, taking care that it be not colored by his own prejudices or personality. My chief authorities, aside from Tolstoï’s own writings (including a collection of five hundred and sixty-two letters under the title “Tolstovsky Almanakh”) are Biryukóf (as far as accessible), Aylmer Maude’s two-volume Life, Behrs’s “Recollections,” and Edward A. Steiner’s “Tolstoy, the Man.”
It would make a list quite too long to mention all the other books and articles which have proved helpful. Lack of space precluded an appendix to contain representative extracts from the recollections or opinions of Julius Froebel (from his “Lebenslauf,” published in Stuttgart in 1891), Eugene Schuyler’s Essays, George Kennan’s article which Tolstoï himself verified, President White’s Autobiography, D. E. Ovsyánnikof-Kulikovsky’s Sketch of Tolstoï's activities, and many
